Jeanne Marrs, an advertising administrator from Dallas, said she booked a flight to New York two weeks after the World Trade Center attack because she "wanted to get here before it all got back to normal."
Marrs, looking at the transformed New York skyline from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, said, "it's a big tragedy and it's all anyone is talking about in Dallas, or anywhere else. I wanted to be a part of it, to know what it's like being here."
PHOTO: AP
Marrs, 38, represents a new, relatively small set of tourists who have arrived in the city since Sept. 11 undeterred by fears of air travel or anthrax bacteria. They decided to come, they said, to support the city and to glimpse at what they are unable to see on television -- the changed urban landscape and how New Yorkers are coping.
New York's US$25 billion-a-year tourism industry lost US$280 million in the five weeks after the attack, and is losing about US$30 million each week, said Cristyne Nicholas, president of NYC & Co, the city's convention and visitors' bureau.
Last year, 9.6 million visitors came to the city from September to November. Nicholas said that number is off about 30 percent.
Nicholas said she hopes the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season will help "pull us through." Some businesses that rely on tourists -- like hotels and the Broadway theater -- are starting to recover, Nicholas said. Other aspects of tourism have been altered because of visitors who want to relate to the tragedy.
Manhattan cruises
The Circle Line cruise service, which operates boats that go around Manhattan on the Hudson and East Rivers, is averaging 400 to 500 people on each of its vessels, compared with 300 to 350 during the same time last year, said Peter Cavrell, a company spokesman. The rise comes, in part, because its tours offer views of the destruction at the trade center site.
Cavrell said he's seen fewer international tourists on the boats and more Americans, particularly residents of the New York metropolitan region.
"I don't know if people are trying to see something as much as just wanting to get close to feel what's going on," Cavrell said. The tour guides are "letting people just reflect on the feelings they get when they go past" the trade center site.
Manhattan Rickshaw Co, which offers pedicab rides to tourists, has changed its focus to concentrate on the financial district. Road closures and security checkpoints have limited the number of taxis that operate in the area.
"People are trying to get downtown because they want to pay their respects," said Peter Meitzler, who manages the company.
"They go down there in droves." Thousands of tourists each day make their way to Broadway and Maiden Lane, the closest viewing point for "Ground Zero." They see the remains of the trade center and smoke rising from where the towers stood. Some snap photos, others leave flowers or photographs of loved ones. A few weep.
"Everyone wants to see the site; almost every group asks for it," said Dennis Onorato, 46, a tour escort with the Guide Service of New York.
`Circus atmosphere'
Onorato said he was initially uncomfortable taking groups to the site because he "didn't like the circus atmosphere." He has become fascinated by the reactions people have to it.
"The first days, the whole group would cry," he said.
"Now, some people cry. Other people just want a picture of themselves in front of it, which I find appalling. The reaction is getting less and less emotional." Nick and Gerry Fletcher reserved seats on Sept. 9 for a flight to New York, hoping to show their children the city where they met and married 15 years ago before moving to London. They didn't cancel their trip.
"I was even more determined to come" after Sept. 11, Gerry Fletcher said. "It seemed more important, so the whole extended family came and met us here." They visited typical tourist spots, took a horse-drawn carriage ride around Central Park, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, went ice skating at Rockefeller Center, ate in an expensive restaurant -- and then made a stop at "Ground Zero."
Their son Chris, 14, said he wanted to see the site because "it's interesting." Their 12-year-old son, Adam, had a different opinion. "It's really obscene to think we came down to see how all these people died," he said. "You don't like to stare right in the face of death." On a hazy afternoon at the Empire State Building, Marrs said she planned to attend two Broadway shows and shop. She already had visited "Ground Zero."
Chance for bonding
"I've seen it for real now," she said. "It's not the site that moves you. It's all the posters and the shrines down there. I definitely bonded with all the people. Everyone's praying and kind of being one."
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